Far far away from the wretchedness of Brimstone, a bar in the Sol system is jammed with paramedics, firefighters and rescue pilots. It is a ritual of laughing, telling stories and hard drinking — some to forget, some to re-live wild moments, and some to say last farewells.

Things have come unraveled; the hunter and hunted alike in a tangle of wrecked ships falling into a distant star. Things were no better at home. In a flash of INN reporting Brimstone jumped to the forefront of galactic media. The Xi’an, the Banu, the UEE, all looking for their pound of flesh. Merc’ bounty […]

Hey INNers, today’s fiction has been written by one of our hosted fiction writers who has migrated his way onto the INN writing staff. Please enjoy another segment from Dragonfiremalus’s Hunted and Hunter series.

The plundering and backstabbing might be all fun and adventure for pirates, but if you are good guy charged with cleaning up the mess, it is a real pain in the ass. And it doesn’t bode well when you’ve pissed off some of the most elite pilots in the ‘verse.

Life is full of games. Some are fun, some are exciting, and some you damn sure better win. Doc had been rolling his dice on one such game, playing against a hardcore opponent who didn’t play nice. When Doc’s dice came up snake-eyes, the results weren’t pretty.

There’s the stealing, there’s the killing, but all that is fun and games. That doesn’t pay the bills or fuel the ships. At the end of the day you better have a buyer or the most priceless prize is just dead weight. When you find yourself neck-deep in some tense negotiations, its always good to […]

The last thing Doc needed was a reminder of ‘that night’ – the night the sky was swallowed in a hellish vortex of energy. The night that devoured half of Brimstone. But the breadcrumbs that spilled from a frozen severed head lead a twisting path to the bottom of Mine 3, where the Xi’An were […]

Yeah we get pushed around by the bad guys: the criminals, the Vanduul, every slimeball in the ‘verse that wants to take away our property, our worlds, our freedom. We’re supposed to be the good guys, the compassionate ones. But some days you just gotta pull the covers off the gatling guns… and push back. […]

Throught all of history, few things have been prized as greatly as a good pub. That rule is no less true in space, where the distance between bars might be measured in light years. The Claddagh was the best working man’s gin-joint in Brimstone; nowhere near as fancy as Roxy’s but a damn sight better […]

For a guy who at one point just wanted to be a medic, Doc found himself tumbling down the rabbit hole into a world of violent crime and weird-ass science. As bizarre as things had gotten, nothing could have prepared him for his return to Mine 3, far below the surface of the Nek.

They say time is money, but these days the real gold is information. Juicy data. Almost any secret can be uncovered if you know what database to hack, what email system to infiltrate. Some people call that criminal but as a professional hacker, Darius called it a solid business model.

Assassins have crept through the dark hallways of history, a fact that will persist in the far-flung future. Technology won’t make us better, it will just make us better at what we do. With sleek powered armor and active camouflage, tomorrow’s elite paid killers will move like shadows in the darkness.

Despite all of our goodness, no race in the ‘verse can be as cruel as mankind. As a species we inflict harm on ourselves, on each other, on every living thing around us. Some do it for money, some to feed our darkest bloodlust, and some just to be inexplicably mean. In an episode that […]